Translation: This is a proposal for NAD to consider, but other organizations can look at it as well. In today’s digital age, information is offered for free on the internet. This creates high volumes of traffic, and high distribution of information. If a website decides to close off their content behind a pay wall, their traffic decreases to the few who are willing to pay for the membership.
Likewise for NAD — the paid membership decreases the number of their consumers. If NAD opened up their membership to everyone, they’d be able to grab hold on a larger audience.
Some people might be concerned that this means hearing people would take control. Actually there are two reasons why I doubt this would happen. First, the NAD Bylaws do not state that members must have a hearing loss. That would have given opportunity for hearing people to take over, but it didn’t happen – which brings us to reason two. The NAD conferences are expensive affairs that deaf people travel to and socialize at. The conference is where the power happens — where the votes take place. What benefit would there be for a hearing non-signer? Hence it remains in deaf hands.
